Dear computer companies,

This -> ✨

Is now the Mark Of Cain. I will never ever click any button that features it.

Regards,

Approximately everyone

Happy (Merry?) Equinox today… the Sun crosses declination 0º northward today at 14:46 Universal Time (UT)/10:46 AM EDT, marking the start of astronomical Spring in the northern hemisphere, and Fall in the southern.

In the 21st century, the March Equinox falls mostly on the 20th, though it stopped falling on the 21st in 2007, and will start occasionally falling on the 19th in 2044.

https://www.astropixels.com/ephemeris/soleq2001.html

The biannual equinoxes are also the season where satellites way out in geostationary/geosynchronous orbit flare and eclipse, as they hit and then emerge the Earth’s shadow. https://www.universetoday.com/articles/tracking-satellites-through-geosat-eclipse-season

We may also be in for enhanced aurora this weekend, as what’s known as the Russell-Mcpherron Effect comes into play around the equinox, opening fissures in the Earth’s geomagnetic field allowing for space weather to come streaming through.

What you can’t do is balance an egg on its end any better during the equinox than on any other date. Plus, the ‘equal night’ naming is only approximate, as the true ‘equilux’ for a given location lags or precedes the equinox by several days. GEOsats see the ‘tip’ of the Earth near perpendicular: https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/seeing-equinoxes-and-solstices-from-space-52248/

The Vernal Equinox 2026

The date of the Vernal Equinox is often given as 21st March, but in fact it has only been on 21st March twice this century so far (2003 and 2007); it was on 20th March in 2008, has been on 20th March every spring from then until now, and will be until 2044 (when it will be on March 19th). I'll be retired by then.

http://telescoper.blog/2026/03/20/the-vernal-equinox-2026/

Me: Spends several years crafting a very careful systematic review and meta-analysis showing that most AI approaches applied in a specific medical context are overfitted to that context, and are therefore useless generally

Them: "AI models have played an irreplaceable role in this domain" [cites me et al]